Effects of Splitter Blades on Centrifugal Pump Performance – A Review

In turbomachinery design like pumps and compressors impeller is a crucial part. Centrifugal pump design is well facilitated by the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Opportunities do exist to improve the pump performance. This improvement can be achieved by making geometrical changes in design of an impeller like blade inlet & outlet angles, impeller inlet & outlet diameter and number of blades. Increase in number of blades increases the head and in addition causes the efficiency to decrease. This decrease in efficiency is due to the blockage of the fluid due to reduced area and increased friction inside the casing. Addition of splitter blades decreases the clogging at impeller inlet resulting in increase in pump performance. In this paper overview of various works by previous researches & their finding about study of effect of splitter blades on the centrifugal pump performance are done. And it is observed that as the splitter blade length increases; the flow rate and power increases, the efficiency decreases as well as hydraulic performances are improved, pressure fluctuations are reduced, and operating range is extended.On the other hand, the additional splitter blades will have positive effect on the cavitation performance due to the changes at the impeller inlet channel.